2 2 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



the localities where various metals, minerals and rocks 

 were known to exist. In this way he brought into one 

 view a large amount of information regarding the geogra- 

 phical distribution of the substances which he selected for 

 illustration. 



This memoir, with its maps, seems to have gratified the 

 Academy of Sciences, for not merely was it inserted in the 

 volume of Transactions for the year, but in the Journal 

 or annual summary of the more important work of the 

 Academy it occupies a conspicuous place. The official 

 record announced that a new application of geography had 

 been inaugurated by the author, who, neglecting the 

 political limits traced on maps, sought to group the different 

 regions of the earth according to the nature of the sub- 

 stances that lie beneath the surface. "The work of M. 

 Guettard," it is further remarked, " opens up a new field 

 for geographers and naturalists, and forms, so to speak, a 

 link between two sciences which have hitherto been 

 regarded as entirely independent of each other." * 



I have dwelt at some length on this early work of 

 Guettard because of its importance in the history of geo- 

 logical cartography. These maps, so far as I know, were the 

 first ever constructed to express the superficial distribution 

 of minerals and rocks. The gifted Frenchman who pro- 

 duced them is thus the father of all the national Geological 

 Surveys which have been instituted by the various civilized 

 nations of the Old and the New Worlds. 2 



1 Mem. Acad. Roy. Sciences, 1751 ; Journal, p. 105. 



2 So far as I have been able to ascertain, the earliest geological map 

 published with colours to express the several areas of the rocks was that 

 issued at Leipzig in 1778 by J. F. "W. Charpentier, Professor in the Mining 

 Academy of Freiberg, to accompany his quarto volume on the Mineral- 



